Random Picture #136

Both photos courtesy of BlogD (used with permission). 

It's nice to see that the Japanese merchants are really getting into the spirit of the season. That's the spirit of selling more stuff to people, of course. These are kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) cream bread which were on sale in Ikebukuro. The face is a chocolate cookie mixture, probably similar to the coating on melon pan. The bread is pumpkin flavored and inside is custard cream. I'd be happy to sample these if I were in Tokyo if it weren't for the fact that they look like a family that didn't look like cream bread created close enough to  Fukushima's nuclear plant to create some unfortunate results. These are actually very unusual in that they are rather sloppily made for a Japanese bakery. Usually, they're  more meticulous than this.

The cheesecakes in this picture are much closer to what one would expect from a Japanese bakery. They are "rare cheesecakes" (like New York style, except lighter, as opposed to baked cheesecake) and the stenciling is pretty perfect looking. Despite having pumpkins on them, they aren't pumpkin flavored, though those are mini pumpkin pies down below. I wonder if those pies are Japanese pumpkin (kabocha) or American. Yes, the taste is very different. I wouldn't buy one though as 845 yen ($10.65) is far too expensive for a tiny pie.

Random Picture #116

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I don't know if my readers think that I carefully select my random pictures from a distinct set of photos, but I can tell you that the process is, well, very "random". I have thousands of pictures from my time in Japan and I choose a folder and just poke around in one until I find something I want to show people. For reasons that I cannot begin to fathom, it is not infrequently the case that the random picture I stumble upon is related to a recent review. In this case, I reviewed a rice bar sandwich cookie on Monday and happened upon this picture of rice cereal sweets for sale in Asakusa. Perhaps the rivers of fate flow in a particular direction, or I'm just exercising selection recognition and fooling myself (likely the latter).

Since breakfast cereal isn't very popular in Japan, it always seems odd that there are these cereal-based sweets though it really shouldn't since there is no reason why the Japanese can't puff or crisp rice for cereal as well as anyone else. These bags of cereal snacks are blocks of crispy rice glued together with rice syrup. The silver bowls contain samples and this was an unusual display because there are actual economies of scale at play here. It was extremely rare to see any sort of meaningful price reduction for buying more in Japan. One bag is 400 yen and three bags are 1000 yen. That being said, I think that even at 333 1/3 yen per bag, these were overpriced.